Many patients under the direction of a physician provide themselves with periodic doses of medication by hypodermic injection. Probably the most common instance of such is the insulin injections that diabetics must provide themselves with on a daily basis.
One thing key to providing such injections is to insure that the correct dose is administered with each injection. To fill the syringe, the patient typically inserts the needle of the syringe into a vial containing the desired medication. The syringe plunger is then withdrawn and stopped at a location relative to gradation markings on the outside of the syringe to assure that a proper quantity of medication liquid is withdrawn into the syringe barrel. Such a procedure can however be difficult or impossible for the blind or other visually impaired people.
One technique to overcome such drawback would be for the pharmacist to provide the patient with pre-filled syringes having the desired quantity of medication provided therein. This would undesirably however require that the manufacturer provide various syringes filled with various medications at selected dosages, or require the pharmacist to fill a series of syringes for the patients with the correct medication and dosages. Neither of these alternatives is very desirable., In the first, considerable expense would be associated with the manufacturer providing a plurality of syringes with various medication at various dosages. Having a pharmacist provide the filled syringes would breach the sterile field of the syringes, subjecting the patient to greater risk of infection.
Accordingly, a need remains to assist the visually impaired and other people to, in a more automated way, provide filling of a syringe with the desired mediation to a predetermined dosage.